Although the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review proposed mergers, in mergers involving communications businesses the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decides whether it would serve the public interest for the acquired firm to transfer its operating...

In an earlier article, we presented a case study of local loop unbundling (LLU) in the Republic of Ireland in 2001. We explained how the predecessor regulatory body to the Irish Commission for Communications Regulation (Comreg) could select the least arbitrary interim access rate. This article...

In this article, we examine the open access debate in the context of cable services and broadband Internet services from an antitrust framework. Our analysis is prompted by the recent AT&T-MediaOne and AOL-Time Warner mergers, which raise issues concerning the impact of integrated cable content...

To date, most residential customers to the Internet have used dial-up modems with a top speed of about 56.6 kbps [kilobits per second]. In the past two years broadband access has become available via cable modems offered by the local unregulated cable provider and via digital subscriber lines...

As economists with significant experience in competition and regulatory matters, we offer comments on the remedies proposed by the Department of Justice to address the competitive effects flowing from the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, as recognized by the DOJ's Complaint. We find that...

In this article, we examine the benefits that accrue to policyholders and incumbent insurers from an active secondary market for life insurance policies. We begin by examining the benefits of secondary markets in the home mortgage and catastrophic risk insurance industries as points of...

Network neutrality issues have been vigorously debated worldwide over the past few years. One major aim of network neutrality proponents is to prevent high-speed Internet service providers from charging content providers for priority delivery. Recently, proponents have turned their attention to...

An expanding economics literature has examined the theoretical linkages between mandatory unbundling in the telecommunications sector and the incentives to invest in facilities by both incumbent local carriers and competitive carriers. Recent empirical evidence that substantiates the theory has...